Archives:

Blogroll:

Meta:

I don’t often blog about political issues, but the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is just too despicable and infuriating for me to stay silent.

The Keystone XL pipeline is a proposed 1700-mile long pipeline that would carry diluted tar sands from Alberta, Canada to Texas. Tar sands (also called oil sands) are a mixture of sand and bitumen, a type of gooey petroleum that resembles tar. Tar sands can be processed into crude oil, and then refined into petroleum products like gasoline (aka. petrol), propane, and motor oil. TransCanada, the oil company who wants to build the pipeline, plans to process the tar sand in Houson, Texas, and from there will likely ship the product overseas. This plan would be extremely lucrative for TransCanada, but devastating to the US and global environments.

Last month, Google rolled out its new “Google+” social networking platform, and it enjoyed an enthusiastic reception among metaverse residents, tech bloggers, and others. Google+’s “Circles” feature, which gives you more fine-grained control over who you share with, seemed to be an indication that Google+ would be more privacy-conscious than its established competitor, Facebook.

Unfortunately, the appeal of Google+ quickly wore off, as it became apparent that Google was suspending accounts judged to be using a pseudonym or other “not real” name. The first highly-visible case among the Second Life crowd was Opensource Obscure being suspended, but hundreds more Second Life users were suspended within a week. And it wasn’t just Second Life residents: pseudonymous accounts of all types were being suspended en masse, along with accounts representing companies and organizations. Official statements from Google employees confirmed that Google+ users are required to use what Google calls “common names” or “real names”.

Every once in a while, some Second Life drama will erupt about a “client detection system” (CDS), a scripted product that supposedly protects your store from content rippers (aka “content thieves”) by banning users of untrusted viewer programs. There was such an episode last week, with a certain store using a certain CDS that wrongly banned a legitimate customer using a legitimate viewer. I won’t bother mentioning the name of the store or the CDS, because this post isn’t about that specific incident. This post is about every CDS, every store, and every viewer.

(Full disclosure: the viewer in that particular case was the Imprudence Experimental, which I am involved with. But, users of other viewers have been wrongfully banned by similar systems in the past.)

Simply put, a CDS does not provide any significant protection against content rippers. It is snake oil: a product created to commercially exploit store owners’ fear. If you have a CDS set up in your shop, you aren’t protecting your content, you’re just paying someone to invade your customers’ privacy, drive away legitimate customers, and blemish your reputation.

Most people don’t understand how a CDS works, but believe that it might actually be able to stop content rippers. The purpose of this post is to explain how they function, why they are ineffective, and furthermore why they are harmful to your customers and bad for your business.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Minecraft, a 3D exploring/digging/building game that has been receiving a lot of attention lately. I first started playing Minecraft about a month ago, and it was clear after two days that it would consume my every waking hour if I let it. I put some self-imposed limits on how much I could play it, with modest success. After 10 days, a painful-yet-fortuitous glitch deleted my world, and I used the opportunity to try to pry myself away from the game.

Yet, even though I haven’t played it in over three weeks, I still feel an urge to play it nearly every day. There is something about its creative, free-form play that is incredibly attractive, even addictive. Meanwhile, I have my own OpenSim region where I can create and do anything I want, yet it sits neglected for lack of time, interest, or motivation.

Why this stark difference? Why is Minecraft, the more limited and less creative of the two, the more appealing? And what, if anything, can I do to harness the creative drive that Minecraft inspires, and channel it into my OpenSim region and other projects?

As I previously posted, Cuddlefish Junction is now closed and all products taken off the shelves. Thank you to all my customers over the years for your business! I hope my creations have touched you in many placesways.

I mentioned in my previous post that I was closing my store, Cuddlefish Junction, but making arrangements to sell some of my products (such as the Deliverator) through other SL stores. After further consideration, though, I’ve decided not to sell my products elsewhere, but rather discontinue them altogether. It’s simply not worth my time to bother with them anymore.

So, this blog post is to announce that Cuddlefish Junction is closing May 30. My XStreet listings are coming down that day as well, so the next two weeks are your last opportunity to purchase Deliverators, Squidograms, or my other products in SL.

Even after I’m gone, nearly all of my products should keep working forever (until LL does something to break them, anyway). The Deliverator is a bit different, though, since it relies on my server for looking up people’s UUIDs, and I don’t know how long I’ll be running this site. So, fair warning: some day in the future — it could be two months from now, or a year, or ten years — the Deliverator service will be shut down. If that concerns you, don’t buy one.

Yesterday, April 22, was my fourth rezday. It was four years ago yesterday that I logged in to Second Life for the first time, and the persona of Jacek Antonelli was born.

Yesterday was also the last rezday I’ll be celebrating in Second Life. A recent culmination of circumstances has pushed me away from Second Life, and triggered my migration to OpenSim. I’ll be wrapping up my affairs over the next month, then putting my Second Life account on the shelf. By this time next year, I expect SL to be mostly irrelevant to my day-to-day life.

It’s that time of year again: time to plug my products remind you how easy it is to send your holiday cards and invitations with the Deliverator!

Instead of going through the chore of opening your friend’s profiles and dragging the item onto them, one by one, until you get RDNDI (Repetitive Drag-N-Drop Injury) — just put the item and a list of recipients into your Deliverator and let it do the boring part while you munch on gingerbread cookies and watch TV.

The Deliverator can be yours for just L$500, and will serve you dutifully and lovingly, again and again. ;)

P.S. Don’t forget, Cephalopodmas is just 3 days away! A Squidogram always makes for a slimy and surprising souvenier for that special someone. Just L$50, with 5 packs and 10 packs at a discount!